Note 706 — Chapter XVI · RENAISSANCE ETHICS: REVIVAL OF NATURALISM IN MORALS

It should be borne in mind that in Machiavelli’s age politics had been secularized, that is, divorced from theology, and this with the approval of most men. Machiavelli would now go farther and separate politics and morality. This is Lord Morley’s interpretation of The Prince. He thinks we shall best understand Machiavelli, yet without for a moment approving his teaching, “if we take him as following up the divorce of politics from theology, by a divorce from ethics also. He was laying down certain maxims of government as an art; the end of that art is the security and permanence of the ruling power; and the fundamental principle from which he silently started, without shadow of doubt or misgiving as to its soundness, was that the application of moral standards to this business is as little to the point as it would be in the navigation of a ship. The effect was fatal even for his own purpose, for what he put aside, whether for the sake of argument or because he thought them in substance irrelevant, were nothing less than the living forces by which societies subsist and governments are strong” (Machiavelli, Romanes Lecture for 1897).